Gamified learning: How gamification can increase Gen-Y engagement with grunt work
Mario Herger
If engagement at work is an indicator of happiness, then we
live in a very sad world. Research by Gallup has found that,
in most countries, the number of engaged employees is in the low double-digits or even single-digit range. Between 70 and
over 90 per cent of employees are disengaged.1
There are a number of reasons for this engagement crisis. Employees may feel that their work has no meaning and that
their tasks are monotonous and boring. Or, they may feel that they have no autonomy and that they are constantly being told what to do. Even if they have autonomy, they may get no feedback or receive only negative feedback that is provided
too late to be constructive.
All of this contributes to low levels of happiness and workplace satisfaction. But, if employees are treated with indignity and cannot form bonds with their co-workers, even the best-intended reward plans – which pose a separate challenge – will fail at engaging employees.
It doesn’t matter what status your profession has in the
public’s perception. Whether we are talking about room maids,
car assembly line workers, software programmers or lawyers,
high-status jobs don’t automatically guarantee higher satisfaction and engagement.
In fact, research has found that San Franciscan garbage collectors are among the happiest workers.2 While those of
us not working in the garbage-collecting business are certainly surprised, a consideration of the factors makes it immediately clear why such a perceived low-status job can give high
job satisfaction.
First, garbage collectors know that their work has meaning. Go one week without trash collection and the city delves into chaos and a health hazard.
Second, San Franciscan garbage collectors own a small share in their own company. That ascertains a say in management and leads to a dignified work environment,
because nobody is yelling at them or treating them badly.
Third, the garbage collectors can select their own routes. Every few months, they switch collection routes and see new parts of the city. They also decide their own work rhythm and thus feel under much less pressure.
Compare that to many other workplaces. At an assembly line, the conveyor belt determines the work rhythm.
In software business development, deadlines are constantly looming above one’s head and programmers take shortcuts to reach their goals. And young lawyers have to earn their merits
by doing monotonous ‘grunt’ or grind work for senior partners.
All of these elements are the same parts that make games
so popular and addictive. In fact, there are many similarities between games and work. Both have goals, tasks, rules, feedback, meaning, promotion, information, risk, failure, success and so on. But, the way that they are perceived are completely different. In games, players are willing to do a lot of grind work (such as killing monsters) to level up, even if the task itself looks
rather boring.
The fact that work and games seem so similar in their granular stage has caught the attention of businesses, which
has sparked a new discipline that we call gamification.
Gamification describes the concept of applying game design elements to a non-game context.
This does not mean that a game is created but that, with a gamification design, the user is offered a path to a ‘gameful’ experience. Designers need to have empathy with users and understand what they are interested in and what motivates them. Gamification needs to solve a problem. It needs to have
a purpose that creates value. But, first and foremost, it needs
to create value for the user, and only then for anyone else.
Games in business
Gamification has been found to be highly effective in teaching, engaging, entertaining and measuring players (a.k.a. users).
Two, three and four-digit improvements in measures have occurred, with hundreds of examples in the corporate world.3
The best part is that games are something that people are very familiar with. The stereotypical fourteen-year old pimpled
and obese boy without friends playing videogames may exist,
but the fact is that the average age of a video gamer is 37 years, and 47 per cent of players are women.
The millennial generation will have played 10,000 hours of video games when they enter the workforce. Over 80 million people have played the online game Farmville, which means that players are everywhere and they are very familiar with the language of video games.
Game design elements appear in a lot of applications that are not games. Some of the gamified applications and systems that you may have already used include social networks such as LinkedIn or Facebook, shopping sites like Amazon or fitness applications such as Nike+ or Fitbit.
If you collect miles in a frequent flyer programme, you are using a gamified loyalty system. In fact, wherever we want to change and influence people’s behaviour, gamification is applicable. We may want employees to report their work hours timelier, or have them fill out more information about a client account, or share their knowledge more freely with co-workers
in the company’s knowledge base.
What works for many corporate businesses can also be applied to law firms. If we put the experiences of players and young lawyers side by side, it becomes apparent why games are so engaging, but day-to-day work not that much. This gives us a clue as to what we can do to fix the work experience for everyone’s benefit.
After all, more engaged employees fulfil their jobs better and
go the extra mile, which makes customers happy and ultimately benefits the organisation.
Let’s look at five ways in which gamification can help law firms to improve employee engagement.
1. Feedback
Imagine a young lawyer who’s eager to prove himself. He gets assigned to help a senior partner on a case and puts in many hours of grind work to help prepare it. And then: nothing.
No thank you, no feedback on whether the work was helpful,
no appreciation, no coaching on what can be done better;
no evaluation from the partners.
In a game, feedback is constantly given and touches many senses. From points, badges and stars to audio and visual feedback to force feedback on controllers, feedback reaches players on all levels. Feedback conveys information.
In the popular game Angry Birds, structures crumble and break, balloons pop, birds chirp and, when the pigs survive,
they grunt and trash-talk the birds. In Candy Crush, the candy rows shutter in fireworks and an appreciative ‘sweet!’ is given
both verbally and in writing. The feedback is immediate;
players know right away how they are doing.
This is not always the case at work. For the young lawyer
in the above example, the annual performance review may come nine months after the project was finished, which is very late to receive feedback on areas for improvement. How much fun would Angry Birds be if you heard only nine months later that you had killed the pigs? And, you wouldn’t be able to learn from the feedback on how to be successful.
Feedback comes in three forms: as appreciation, as coaching and as evaluation. Appreciation is when your efforts are being recognised, which can be through something as simple as
a ‘thank you’. Coaching is when you are being told how you can become even better, while evaluation is when you are being compared to benchmarks.
Those three forms need to be in balance. If employees
hear only evaluative feedback and never get appreciated
for the hard work they put into a project, this will quickly
lead to disengagement.
2. Interest and meaning
Even grind work can be made interesting and meaningful.
Are young lawyers informed about the importance of the
work that they are doing? Do they see the bigger picture
and can they sit in at key meetings to understand the impact
of their work?
Why do we kill pigs in Angry Birds? Because the pigs
stole the birds’ eggs. While this may sound like a silly reason,
it is enough to motivate and engage players over a long period
of time.
3. Relationship
The conventional wisdom about games is that they are competitive. Poker is highly competitive, golf is about winning and baseball is about beating the other team. But, upon closer inspection, it turns out that the social aspect of games trumps the competitive components by a factor of three to one.
Poker is highly social: without social skills, players cannot interpret and read whether others are bluffing.
Golf is synonymous with doing business, thus it is a very social sport. And, while we
may remember beating other teams, the camaraderie with our teammates is what
counts and is fondly remembered.
We are social animals. In games, 80 per cent of players are socialisers, while less than one per cent are of the competitive killer type. Setting up employees to compete against each other is the best way to make them unhappy and fail. And, why would we set them up to compete? After all, businesses are created because people can achieve more by working together than they could by working alone. If only one person can win, all of the others are losing.
That’s why enabling employees to socialise with others is a key element of the workplace and should take a cue from games. If you make your group of associates compete for a small number of partner positions, you’ll end up with new partners that you may not want: people who justify all – including cheating and sycophantic behaviour – to win, but not necessarily the ones that do the best work.
4. Autonomy and learning
Games give players control over their fate. They give players goals and various degrees of freedom to choose how to reach them.
This autonomy can be as far reaching as choosing which of the sixteen chess figures to move to simply choosing the angle to slingshot an ‘angry bird’ at the pigs. But, nobody tells players that they must move the pawn on B2 first, followed by the knight at A2; or that the angle must be 45 degrees for all levels of Angry Birds because the equity partner said so.
Autonomy also enables self-directed learning. If a player chooses to move another figure first, he will face the consequences. This experience will help lead to a better subsequent game. This is what a work environment often does not allow. Some managers don’t trust their employees and start micromanaging, which is not only a huge waste of time for everyone but also deprives the employee of a learning experience and the sense of autonomy. A big part of learning is failing and trying again.
5. Compensation and rewards
Do you play games just for the points earned? Most people play games because of the fun, the feedback, the learning, the sense of mastery, the socialising aspects and so on. Our societies are reward-driven systems. We give stickers to children for good behaviour, students get grades for good schoolwork, employees receive higher bonuses for good work.
You may think that, to ensure good work, you just need to pay higher bonuses. The truth is that monetary rewards interfere with the interest and motivation of people. In fact, research has found that people who have been promised and given rewards tend to fare worse than those who have not been promised or given any reward for an effort.4
The reason for this is that people lose interest in a task, even if they have been interested before. Rewards that dangle like a carrot in front of people motivates them only to reach for the
carrot and take any shortcut to get it. A child that you want to interest in reading by handing out a sticker for every book he reads will select those books that come with the fewest pages and largest fonts. What you incentivise is getting the sticker, not being interested in reading.
Clearly, gamification is not going to replace a compensation plan. After all, everyone has to make a living. But we need to take compensation out of the equation if we want to avoid an overly strong focus on it. Competition for scarce resources such as a coveted partner spot, a higher bonus or a prime parking spot can easily lead to unethical behaviour. While gamification won’t get rid of the problem completely, it offers a lot of tools to reduce the negative consequences.
Millennial benefits
With a millennial generation entering the workforce and the ubiquity of videogames, businesses can profit greatly by applying the lessons from the different disciplines that come together in the concept of gamification. Supported by overwhelming evidence from many examples and studies, every industry, including the legal sector, should take a closer look at gamification and find ways to implement it. The benefits will speak for themselves.
Mario Herger is founder and partner of Enterprise Gamification Consultancy (www.enterprise-gamification.com)
Endnotes
1. See State of the Global Workplace, Gallup, 2013
2. See San Francisco Scavengers: Dirty Work and the Pride of Ownership, Stewart E. Perry, University of
California Press, 1978
3. See Gamification Facts & Figures, Enterprise Gamification
4. See 8 Examples of Monetary Rewards Leading to Worse Outcomes, Mario Herger, October 2012